Wednesday, July 06, 2005

White House Leak Controversy - Journalist, Judith Miller Jailed!

NY Times journalist, Judith Miller was jailed today for the length of the current investigation into the white house leak that exposed Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA agent. Miller's only opportunity to free herself in the interim would be to testify as to who her sources were. Mathew Cooper, the Time journalist also threatened with a jail sentence, has now said that he's received a dramatic message free'ing him to testify.

Crazy stuff. How could anyone allow someone to go to jail like this. Whomever leaked the information about Valerie Plame to Judith Miller is, as far as I'm concerned, the lowest of the low. Not only has he/she freely endangered Valerie Plame's life in a political attack against her husband, he/she has also now sent an innocent journalist to jail for sticking to her principles.

While Judith Miller isn't advancing the cause of justice, I do believe her courage is remarkable in an age where substance is sorely lacking in all spheres of public life. Would any politician - senator, or even President, go to to jail in defense of what they thought was the service of the people. Whatever Mathew Cooper's dramatic information, I doubt very highly that it involves the permission of his source. If it does, though, this categorically proves that Miller and Cooper's respective sources were different individuals.

The gutter pundits seem to have been avoiding the story. Even Sean Hannity, who can usually turn anything into an opportunity to bash the Democratic party, rapidly moved off the subject when the situation was raised by a caller on his radio show. He simply stated that Rove talks to reporters all the time, and there is no evidence he leaked anything about a CIA agent. A lack of a coherent defense strategy from the right has been discussed as proof that their feathers are ruffled on other blogs... in actual fact I think it points to the fact that they are either trying to let the story die by not adding any fuel to the fire, or they are really not taking any of this seriously.

On another blog, I also found a great statement from Rove that seems to contradict the implications of his lawyers qualified statement to the press, which stated he had not knowingly divulged information about Valerie Plame CIA position, potentially meaning he had discussed Valerie Plame with journalists, and unknowingly said something about her position in Niger.

In August of 2004, asked about his involvement in the leak, he said, "Well, I'll repeat what I said to ABC News when this whole thing broke some number of months ago. I didn't know her name and didn't leak her name." [CNN, 7/4/05]

If there is one leak that I think everybody would like to see, it would be what exactly Rove has testified to the grand jury thus far. Because in the end I have a feeling that this will be the measure by which he is judged.